Re: timestamp with/without time zone

> Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> > Very few people know the standards stuff so it seems we should just call
> > it timestamp and do the best we can. Basically by mentioning "with
> > timezone" we are making the standards people happy but confusing our
> > users.
>
> I don't believe we're making any standards-lovers happy either, because
> the datatype in question *is* *not* SQL9x's TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE.
> Given that no one actually wants to change its behavior to conform to
> either of the standard's datatypes, ISTM that calling it something
> different from either of those two is the appropriate path.
>
> At some point (if someone is foolish enough to want to implement the
> spec's semantics) we might have three distinct datatypes called
> timestamp, timestamp with time zone, and timestamp without time zone,
> with the first of these (the existing type) being the recommended
> choice. What we have at the moment is that lacking implementations
> for the last two, we map them into the first one. That doesn't seem
> unreasonable to me. But to have a clean upgrade path from one to three
> types, we need to be sure we call the existing type what it is, and not
> mislabel it as one of the spec-compliant types.

I am confused what you are suggesting here.

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